Vivian Kubrick's Making The Shining is one of the best making-of films that I have ever seen. Up there with the That Moment doc on the making of Magnolia. Both are far superior to the overrated Hearts of Darkness by virtue of their refusal to make some grand masturbatory thesis statement on the entire project. Vivian Kubrick's film is full of little interview snippets that soften some of the harder stuff. But she doesn't find it necessary to spell it all out for us exactly. She doesn't tell us what it is all about. And that is what makes Making The Shining so extraordinarily invaluable.

Making The Shining starts out with Vivian Kubrick filming Jack Nicholson getting ready for the shoot. She is visibly a little smitten with him, and he flirts with her with an almost unconscious, unthinking ease. Is she smitten with him because he is flirting with her, or is he flirting with her because she is a little smitten by him? It doesn't much matter, of course. The point is that Jack Nicholson glows on the set of The Shining. You may even say that he shines. The flirtation between Kubrick and Nicholson is strong evidence of his power, and the effect that he has on the set. Nicholson is everybody's favorite child, and he acts happily unassuming. Nicholson directly reminds of the little sister in Welcome to the Dollhouse. She's the clear-cut favorite of the bunch, but she isn't much able to acknowledge that. Kubrick and Nicholson seemed to get along extremely well on the set, calibrating freely with one another, tolerating and even appreciating each other's "thing.” There is a great scene in Making The Shining where Nicholson dances around grunting, getting into the character of "the big scary monster.” He's genuinely having fun. He has a few other great lines in regard to the daily script changes that he receives. He has a way of complaining about this subject that lets you know that his annoyance is genuine, but that he understands that this is going to be one of the great experiences of his life. He's exhilarated by the challenge.

Shelley Duvall was not quite the favorite on the set (if I remember correctly, in an audio commentary that she provides for the film Vivian Kubrick acknowledges that Shelley Duvall was rather jealous of all the attention that Nicholson received). She doesn't seem to be able to handle Kubrick the way that Nicholson is. While in interviews she talks about what a genius Kubrick is and how he pushes to get the most out of her, she isn't able to feel this concept the way that Nicholson is.. She complains to Kubrick that her hair is falling out, and gives him a few follicles to examine. He presents them to Vivian's camera, and says, "Your hair is falling out? (beat) Okay..." He then tells Duvall that he doesn't have any sympathy for her. In a later scene, Duvall misses her cue while his crew is waiting in a storm of fake snow. He explodes at her, exclaiming, "We're fucking dying out here," and "You're wasting everybody's time.” Kubrick genuinely seems to loathe this woman, and a lot of the time she doesn't seem to understand him.

Everyone seemed to love little Danny Lloyd. Part of it was obviously the novelty of having a six-year-old on the set. In interviews included in the film, Lloyd expresses the belief that he is being paid something like a dollar for his work (and seems fine with it), and talks about how despite claims to the contrary by his friends, he really is smart. From the looks of it, it appears that Lloyd was also quite easy to work with. His direction basically amounts to Kubrick barking, "Look scared! Look scared! Look scared!" And Lloyd can adequately mime looking scared. The other two main actors in the film were actors. They had to get into character. Lloyd did not, and in a major way, I think that that may have been a comfort for Kubrick. I theorize that the rapport that Kubrick has with his actors comes more out of necessity, to survive a long shoot, than really so he can "make them better actors.” Kubrick is not an actor, and so when actors work with him, they have to come up with an approach to their character by themselves. Kubrick will tell them if they are giving him what he wants, but he won't tell them ahead of time what it is that he wants. In making a Kubrick film, actors are more like something to endure. I think that he tries to hire good actors with a pre-established persona and some sort of box office draw (he was also a producer and interested in turning a profit, of course). But I sense that there was really something soothing for him to work with a non-actor like Danny Lloyd, who is designed to simply say his lines and provide the needed facial expressions. Kubrick understands that sometimes he needs acting for his movies, but I think that he may often prefer the times that he doesn't need to help actors along. He must have loved making 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the subject matter eliminates the use for any real acting as there are not characters to get into. Kubrick could just get high on photography and editing.

Danny Lloyd didn't even know that he was in a horror film until years later. According the Internet Movie Database, Kubrick was very protective of him and used creative directing and editing to get the performance out of him. This pretty much seems to be the case based on what we see in Making The Shining. It also shows that it's impossible for Lloyd to really have been in character at any point.

(A Sidenote: There seems to be something a little sleazy about the inclusion of an unknowing child in a horror film. I know that if you are going to make a film version of The Shining, it's unavoidable, and Kubrick did the right thing in the situation, not to mention that if the ends justify the means, it makes the picture more disturbing. But still... When Harmony Korine used those foul-mouthed little boys who "kill" Bunny Boy in Gummo, you at least felt that he wasn't putting ideas in their heads other than something like "say every bad word that you can think of!" When William Friedkin edited The Exorcist so it looked like Linda Blair was masturbating with a crucifix, Blair at least claimed to know what masturbation was. My tolerance of this stuff varies depending on the content, but a good deal of the time I don't think I mind as much when I feel that the child actors understand, in any capacity, how they are going to be viewed. Modest consent, even through a veil of youthful inexperience, is consent all the same. Well, then again, I can understand arguments that modest consent is worse. The only time that I have really been offended by the misuse of innocence in a grotesque contex was when Reba McEntire asks Alfalfa if that is a cowlick or if he's just happy to see her, in the loathsome film version of The Little Rascals. A six-year-old isn't going to get boner jokes and probably shouldn't be exposed to them, especially when it is his boner that is being referenced. Then again, perhaps my outrage is more towards that awful joke itself.)

What all of this primer has to do with The Shining itself is perhaps provide some sort of context to what goes on in the movie, and allow me to say something new about the film (which is otherwise quite difficult). The Nicholson character, Jack, is representative of Kubrick. He acts almost like a wish fulfillment device. (Following the scene where Kubrick explodes at Duvall, Vivian Kubrick even includes a clip from The Shining where Nicholson chastises her for not acknowledging that he has a job to do here.) When Jack gets a drink from the Gold Room bar, he laments to the bartender that he did in fact break his son's arm but that he really does love the little “son of a bitch.” It was a mistake, but that bitch will never let him forget it, he explains. When Grady, the ghostly waiter, tells Jack that he needs to punish his son for trying to get him to leave the Overlook Hotel, Jack does some obligatory sneering at his son, but soon gets to the real issue at hand and blames the mother. The scenes where Jack is trying to kill his wife Wendy have an extraordinary power to them. The scenes where he is trying to kill his son seem a little more drawn-out and dull.

It is generally agreed upon fans and detractors of the film that Duvall's character is a loathsome creation. She's a blubbery whiner. It's grating to be in her presence. I seem to recall Maxim magazine cracking, "Six months trapped in a house with Shelley Duvall would drive anybody crazy." We care about her destruction; we have a need to see it happen. We're more or less indifferent to the destruction of Danny Lloyd's character. He's a non-character who we have neither developed intolerance or extreme affection towards. All that he has going for him is that he's a cute mop-headed little kid. But Duvall's Wendy… now, we really loathe her. It's not just Wendy's sobbing or bellyaching that irritate us, it's the fact that she is such an ineffectual pushover. Perhaps what irritates Jack, and us, the most is that she takes his abuse. Like an instance where he berates her for wrecking his concentration.

From the Internet Movie Database:

Jack: Wendy, let me explain something to you. Whenever you come in here and interrupt me, you're breaking my concentration. You're distracting me! And it will then take me time to get back to where I was. You understand?

Wendy: Yeah.

Jack: Now, we're going to make a new rule. When you come in here and you hear me typing [types] or whether you DON'T hear me typing, or whatever the FUCK you hear me doing; when I'm in here, it means that I am working, THAT means don't come in! Now, do you think you can handle that?

Wendy: Yeah.

Jack: Good. Now why don't you start right now and get the fuck out of here? Hm?

There is an anti-feminist slant to Wendy. While it has often been pointed out that, as a woman, she is pigeonholed into this role of menial household servant in the film, the important part is that she doesn't complain about this. Wendy isn't a fighter, but a perpetual victim. She bites her lip and takes it, like a heroine in a 19th century melodrama. I think it can certainly be said that women audiences hate her even more than the men do. Wendy is weak, and I think Duvall is weak also. One of the biggest problems that I sense Kubrick had while working with her is that it was impossible to respect her.

The Shining is a new type of horror film, predating the slasher craze of the ‘80s, and their revelations, by just a tad bit. The horror here is not as much that we identify with the victim, but that we identify fully with the crazed killer. Nicholson is not a sympathetic character here exactly, but Kubrick puts us into his mindset. When Jack tears down a bathroom door with an axe, we don't fear for Wendy's life. (My God, that is a laughable concept.) Rather, each blow pumps adrenaline into us. We're fantasizing that we are experiencing that sort of power through destruction. We're getting hyped. Nicholson sticks his head into the hole and delivers that infamous line: "Heeere's Johnny!!" It's a good laugh, and we're laughing with him.

After he made 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick had intended to make a biopic on Napoleon. He had cast Jack Nicholson in the title role. The Nietzschean allusions are fairly obvious in 2001 and even A Clockwork Orange, but what did the man say about Napoleon? Napoleon is a synthesis of the unmensch (monster) and the ubermensch, "the noble ideal itself made flesh.” This Napoleon character has been liberated from any fidelity to the social contract, and is simultaneously atrocious and awesome.

Now to take into account that which has been said before of The Shining. The Shining is thought to basically be about the European colonization of America. And it's about how we have been able to ignore these origins. America is based on a genocide, on a Holocaust of the American Indians. They have been exterminated, and we now possess that which is "rightfully our own.” This is all rather subtle, but it is in the film. The Overlook Hotel (because we have Overlooked the violent origins of our country) is built on an Indian burial ground. The wall-to-wall carpeting inside is of American Indian designs. When little Danny rides his tricycle over the designs we don't hear his wheels grinding. The blood and bones of those dead Indians has long since dissolved into the soil. Jack, representing the white male European settlers that formed America, is an extension of the Napoleon character.

Kubrick sees America as the ultimate unmensch/ubermensch. If America is not the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, it is certainly in the top ten. And yet complaining about this country is like shooting fish in a barrel. Both internally and externally, the atrocities that we commit each day are uncountable. The other day on “The Daily Show,” I saw, I think it was a Congressman, explain that he didn't understand how France can take such an elitist view of the United States and its policy towards Iraq when they don't have a military worth talking about. Whether or not France has a military worth talking about or not is not the issue at hand. What is intriguing is that this man defines the legitimacy of one's moral attitude towards war by how much capacity you have for fighting one. And that greatness is defined by the size of your military force. It sounds Strangelovian, non?

When I was in middle school, my father asked me why I thought that we went to fight Iraq in 1991. I said something like, "Well, they invaded Kuwait and we needed to protect our oil interests." Dad replied, "Nope. If you got it, flaunt it." And there you go. America's past is defined by violence and our future is defined by violence. The idea that we shouldn't fight an unpopular war is absurd as we are superior to the rest of the United Nations. We have the most firepower, we have the best military, et cetera. America is an ubermensch of a country, and therefore we do not need to follow the social contract.

In America's creation we relied on ideas of racial and moral superiority. If it's not white or Christian, then it's of little value, and as we are white Christians we are supreme and have a right to take what is ours. While you could argue that we have now generally been able to throw these concepts away, now that we have reached some sort of ideal of power in the master/slave dynamic, it's obvious that we have yet to do so completely. That idea that we have a moral duty as the world's caretaker is nonsense of the classical kind, you see.

There is a very interesting scene where Grady tells Jack that his son has summoned a "nigger cook.” "A nigger?" Jack asks half-innocently, suddenly exploring the idea for the first time. Grady is the God that sends down the black monolith. Jack is the ape who discovers that he can use a bone to kill tapirs and fight off other apes. Jack is incapable of becoming great short of the divine intervention of Grady. In a way, A Clockwork Orange was a flipside to the somewhat broader (and gentler?) implications of 2001: A Space Odyssey. ("They can put a man on the moon, but there is no consideration of what is happening here on earth." Or something of that sort.) The Shining is another. Jack is immortalized in the last shot of the film, a photograph of a July 4 ball in the twenties. This white settler has gained immortality through this date. It's the reward for his pursuit of the ultimate power in the universe. Sure, he didn't do it by himself, God told him. But now that he did, he's up there hobnobbing with the Gods. This shot is parallel to the last shot of 2001: A Space Odyssey in its implications.

The Shining is not however really a strictly anti-American film. It doesn't matter how or why Jack becomes what he is; the final result is nonetheless something extraordinary. While Kubrick bonks him on the head and has him growl and limp like a beast, he is nonetheless a fascinating sight. We realize that we are drawn to him. We are faced with the exact same problem that Nietzche had with Napoleon; we are dazzled and horrified by him. Steven Spielberg paid lots of homage to The Shining when he made Jurassic Park. The kids lock one of the velociraptors in a freezer, just as Wendy does to Jack in The Shining. One of them hides inside of a metal cupboard to hide from the dinosaurs, just as Danny does to hide from Jack. Jurassic Park was about dinosaurs and not people, but it was more direct about this aspect. Dinosaurs are simultaneously magnificent and horrifying sights, just as Jack is in this movie. Taken out of context, some of the shots in Schindler's List could have been played in commercials for the Nazi party. Schindler's List has been accused of aestheticizing the Holocaust, but that's just the thing, isn't it? As a regime, Nazi Germany had classical aspirations and was classically an awesome sight to behold. Hitler was trying to create a new Rome. And then again, Nazi Germany systematically killed innocent people. Lots of them. Six million. This is what The Shining is all about. (Incidentally, Kubrick was a great admirer of both Jurassic Park and Schindler's List. Although I'm not sure for the reasons that I have just provided.)

Yes, Jack looks a little goofy when he gets hit on the head or gets his hand cut, and yes, he looks a little confused and frightened when he kills that "nigger cook.” But for most of the film he is one of the greatest movie monsters that I have ever seen. His first kill may even be justified as the moment when he finally breaks his cherry. When he has finally fully become a beautiful, all-powerful monstrosity. That is what is so disturbing about the film. Kubrick, by reputation, is one of the original unmensch/ubermensches. He's loved and loathed in equal proportions, by the actors who work for him and the filmgoers who watch him. How many critics have fed off a hatred for him and all that he represents? How many cults and religions have emerged from the ground in his name? When we study what happens in the context of a Kubrick film, and we study that which has gone into making them, we see how grossly interrelated the two things are.

I hadn’t always appreciated The Shining to the degree to which I do now. I had admired it, but three scenes in particular prevented me from doing so unconditionally. I always had a problem with the way that Danny grabs a knife and then writes “Redrum” on the wall. The behavior is completely without reason. It doesn’t make any sense. I was also bothered by the climactic scene, where Wendy wanders from room to room seeing all of the ghosts. It was as if Kubrick had decided to use all his best set pieces for a big finale at the end. The demise of the Jack character has never ceased to look cornball to me.

I decided to take another look at the film following a reading of the “Overlook Hotel as America,” and today I can’t deny that it’s one of Kubrick’s best. The complaints that I lodged aren’t invalid really, but they are sort of shallow. When I saw Stephen King’s remake for TV and learned about the background of the fellating guy in the dog suit, I suddenly realized that I didn’t much care to learn about it.

King said of his disappointment of Kubrick’s treatment of his novel: "There's a lot to like about it. But it's a great big beautiful Cadillac with no motor inside, you can sit in it and you can enjoy the smell of the leather upholstery - the only thing you can't do is drive it anywhere. So I would do every thing different. The real problem is that Kubrick set out to make a horror picture with no apparent understanding of the genre. Everything about it screams that from beginning to end, from plot decision to the final scene - which has been used before on ‘The Twilight Zone.’”

Quite true, and quite wrong. People don’t learn or grow in The Shining. There are few surprises worth mentioning, and at first glance not a whole lot really happens. But I’m not sure that such considerations are really material anymore. The crazier the film gets, the more sense it begins to make. And that’s ultimately the most horrifying thing about the film. Just as we see “Redrum” spelled out in the reflection of mirror, do we obtain clarity through distortion. Kubrick’s films are not cold or unemotional, but they are gleefully misanthropic. The Shining gets you high on dementia.